“Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.”

Karl Marx

“Our policy is to create a national health service in order to ensure that everybody in the country irrespective of means, age, sex or occupation shall have equal opportunities to benefit from the best and most up-to-date medical and allied services available.”

Winston Churchill

Here we have two quotes dealing with the same subject. The first quote is from the father of Scientific Socialism, i.e., Marxism and Communism, and the second quote is from the wartime Prime Minister of Great Britain, who was a staunch anti-Communist.

But what transpired today in Washington, is far from the view of Marx, or the view of Churchill. In other words, it is DESPICABLE!

Never before in the history of the United States, has the government of the people, by the people, and for the people ever taken away something the government gave them in the first place.

Not even the enactment of the 18th Amendment outlawing the sale and production of alcohol, stoops to the level of total disregard for the health and welfare of the American people. Alcohol was never something the government had to give to people, they produced it themselves. Our founding fathers were brewers and distillers of alcoholic beverages.

But the vote this afternoon represents a step towards a society this nation has not seen in many decades. You hear that Republicans want to take the country back. The obvious place they want to take us to is the 19th century, when no one had health care, there was no Medicare or Medicaid, or Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, and Workers’ Comp.

There are specific reasons for this, which I will discuss.

First, pure and simple, it is greed. They want the money dedicated for health care and the other medical plans for a huge tax cut for their wealthy friends.

Second, the health insurance companies can now get to pick and choose who they want to cover, what they will cover, and what they will charge you if you have a serious pre-existing condition or a life-threatening disease. We know this as adverse selection.

Third, they don’t believe in giving “entitlements” to anyone except the military and the wealthy.

Fourth, their libertarian, puritanical, Calvinism teaches them that the poor are undeserving of the benefits that money brings, so let them die, and who cares if they are poor, it is a sign of a moral failing.

Another quote from Churchill says that you can always trust the Americans to do the right thing after they have tried everything else.

Well, after today, we have tried everything else. We have given employers the right to offer health insurance to their employees, we have allowed private insurance companies to sell policies to individuals, and we have created separate health care plans for children, the elderly, the military and their families, members of Congress, and the poor.

But for all the reasons I have given above, and many more, this nation refuses to enact single payer health care, the only thing we haven’t tried, and the one form of universal health care every other Western nation provides its citizens.

One fellow blogger last year during the Democratic Primary, said that while he liked Bernie Sanders, he knew that the health insurance companies were not going to scrape their businesses and start from scratch.

But maybe they should. It is because the capitalist profit motive is at the heart of what, in the words of Walter Cronkite, our health care system really is. “America’s health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.” Too many are profiting from other people’s misery, and driving many into poverty. This is the richest nation on Earth, and this is how we treat our fellow citizens.

It is strange that the Conservative Party of Great Britain believes in single payer, but the American Republican Party does not. The truth is, they are no longer the Republican Party but the Republican Libertarian Party.

Once upon a time, members of their right-wing decried the nation’s drift towards “Creeping Socialism.” With this vote, and with executive orders flowing from 1600 every day, we are witnessing “Creeping Fascism.’ The new Secretary of Labor comes from the fast food industry where workers were mistreated, and still are in some places.

Worker’s rights are being eroded with new overtime rules, wages are stagnant, unemployment is still too high despite what the government says.

One other reason for enacting single payer is that doing so will free employers from having to provide it to their employees, and workers over forty will not have to face losing their jobs and careers they spent their lives in.

We, as a nation, must decide; either we take away health care for millions of Americans, or we make sure everyone has it. There can be no half-measures. Many pundits have said the AHCA (Zombie Health Care Bill) will not pass the Senate, but that is what they said about the House of Representatives.

I hope the Senate will defeat this, but if they don’t, the only option left is single payer.

Could not ignore Joe Paduda’s first post this morning, which is also covered on the Health Wonk Review blog.

He lays out in great detail who would be affected by passage of this zombie legislation, and who would come out ahead,

It’s enough to make you sick, that such people exist who will take away health care from the very people who put them in office, and don’t care that many of them will die because they can no longer get health care.

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel went on his show the other night and confessed to the entire country about his newborn son’s heart disease. What was the response from the Nazi right? Attacks.

Why do these people continue to vote against their own economic interests? There are many reasons for this. The first one is simply, they don’t believe Democrats. And why? Because for far too long, Democrats have engaged in Identity Politics, and have ignored the heartland.

Second, the Democrats have generally avoided campaigning in, or developing their local or state parties in those states most likely to vote Republican, but would benefit from Democratic policies in education, job creation, health care, etc.

Third, Republicans have done a great job of convincing people of an “us versus them” mentality. Republicans sound like “us”, act like “us”, enjoy the same activities as “us”, where “they” do not. You hear the words, “elite”, or “elitist” thrown around, as was done yesterday in response to Kimmel’s plea by an alt-rightist.

Forth, Republicans know how to frame an argument by using simple words and phrases, where Democrats go into long, drawn out lectures on policy. They talk to Americans as if every American has a college degree in political science or sociology. Yex, polls do so that many Americans agree with Democratic policies, but we know that polls are not always accurate.

The last election proved that.

Lastly, the Democrats have been late to the party as to what is happening to working people, both blue collar and white collar workers. In fact, the Republicans know all too well what is happening, as they are responsible for the prolongation of their misery, and will do nothing to stop what is about to happen when jobs are replaced by automation.

Universal Basic Income (UBI)? Not from this crowd of neo-fascist, libertaritards. (Take that, Rush Limbaugh!) Want some more Oxycodone?

As we are witnessing day by day, the US is going backwards. All the way back to the 19th century, the very century the GOP is most comfortable with, because that is when they had complete control of the entire government, and their friends in industry were getting richer and richer, and there were no government programs or laws protecting workers and the poor.

So if this zombie health care law gets passed, look out…there will be more zombies where that came from.

Some of their posts are usually out of the scope of this blog, so I very rarely write about these issues, and many times, there are posts from Joe Paduda on subjects I’ve already read, or commented on, so to write about it would be redundant.

But in light of my post yesterday, in which I said, based upon Joe’s post, that the AHCA (Zombie Health Care Bill) was dead, here is the link to today’s Health Wonk Review. I cannot do any more justice to the discussion, so I will let it speak for itself.

When Michael confronts Connie and Neri in the kitchen of his townhouse, he warns them to never give an order to kill someone again (in this case, it was Joey Zaza), and goes on to state that when he thought he had left the mob lifestyle, they pull him back.

As I reported last time, a bill in Arkansas, Senate Bill 653, pending in that state’s legislature’s Insurance & Commerce Committee since the beginning of March, proposes an alternative to the state system.

Ms. Beckman quotes Fred C. Bosse (not Fred C. Dobbs), the southwest region vice president of the American Insurance Association (AIA), who said that the bill is an attempt to keep the workers comp opt-out conversation going.

Mr. Bosse said that the AIA takes these bills seriously (good for them) and engages legislators to dissuade progress of such legislation the AIA believes could create an unequal benefit system for employees. (They haven’t drunk the Kool-Aid either)

Arkansas’ bill is the only legislation currently under consideration, but a state Rep in Florida, Cord Byrd (there’s a name for you), a Republican (it figures) from Jacksonville Beach, promoted legislation last year, but never filed it.

South Carolina and Tennessee, where bills were previously introduced within the past two years has gone nowhere.

And once again ARAWC rears its ugly head. For those of you unfamiliar with ARAWC, or the Association for Responsible Alternatives to Workers’ Compensation, it is a right-wing lobbying and legislation writing group based in Reston, Virginia. (see several other posts on ARAWC on this blog)

A statement ARAWC sent to BI said that these bills are beginning to pop up organically to model benefits that companies have seen from Texas’ non-subscription model. (Organically? That’s like saying mushroom clouds organically popped up over Hiroshima and Nagasaki)

Here’s a laugh for you, straight from the ARAWC statement:

“Outcomes and benefits for injured workers have improved, employers are more competitive when costs are contained and taxpayers are well served by market-driven solutions,” They further said, “We recognize that each state is different and that the discussions at the state level will involve varied opinions.”

Of course, we cannot really know if injured workers are benefitting, or just being denied their rights, and it seems that opt-out is only to help employers and taxpayers get out of their responsibility to those who sustain serious injuries while employed.

In another post, the notion that Texas’ system could serve as a model for other states was outlined in a report by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (don’t you just love the names of these reactionary groups?)

Bill Minick, president of PartnerSource, praised the report, according to Ms. Beckman, and said that competition has driven down insurance premium rates and improved benefits for Texas workers. (That’s what he says, but is any of it true, I wonder? I doubt it.)

ARAWC has listed a laundry list of benefits they say responsible alternative comp laws could provide:

Better wage replacement

Reduced overall employer costs

Faster return to work

Fewer claims disputes (yeah, because they would be denied)

Faster claim payouts

Faster closure (well, when you deny claims, they can be closed faster, duh!)

It is good to know that the AIA is critical of the report, and that in their opinion, it is unworkable to allow employers to adopt a separate, but unequal system of employee benefits.

And as we have seen with the defeat of the AHCA, leaving a government-sponsored program up to market-driven forces is a recipe for disaster that should not be repeated in workers’ comp, no matter what flavor the Kool-Aid comes in.

Yesterday’s crushing defeat of the so-called “American Health Care Act” or AHCA, signals the end of the seven-year long attempt by the Republican Party to legislatively kill the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Yet, as was pointed out on one cable news network last night, it won’t stop the health insurance industry from getting the Republicans in Congress to kill parts of the law slowly by eliminating the taxes that go to pay for the coverage.

Call it “genocide by stealth”, since millions of Americans will die, as per the Congressional Budget Office (CBO’s) scoring of AHCA. If they can’t kill the law outright, the so-called “Freedom Caucus”, actually the Congressional version of the Tea Party, will kill it slowly.

Why do you think they keep saying it is a disaster and it is crumbling? It’s because they are dead set against anyone getting health care unless someone else can make a profit from selling a policy.

Then there is the other question, the one usually raised by liberals and progressives, especially those who supported Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders last year in the primaries, as to why we are the only Western country without universal coverage.

The answer is complex, but not complicated (“who knew health care was so complicated?). First, everything the government of the US has ever implemented for the benefit of people has had to pass muster with the Constitution. It either has to be covered by the Constitution directly, or implied through the taxing mechanism.

Second, the Founding Fathers never mentioned or promoted the right to health care, as the prevailing political and social philosophy of the day was concerned with freedom, liberty, and private property. It has been unclear what, if anything, was meant by the phrase, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, let alone, the phrase, “promote the general welfare.”

Why they never mentioned health care and why other nations have it, is due to the fact that the US was founded during the first half of the period historians call, “the Enlightenment”, when the right to private property, liberty, and freedom were the topics of discussion on both sides of the Atlantic. Basically, the difference between Classical Liberalism (Conservatism) and Modern Liberalism (Liberalism) is between negative rights (the right not to be killed) versus positive rights (the right to a job, education, housing, health care, etc.)

Canada gained its limited independence from Britain nearly a hundred years after we did, and therefore was influenced by the philosophy of the second half of the Enlightenment, which stressed involvement by government in the economy.

The only time the Founders cared about providing some kind of health care plan was directed towards a particular group of citizens in the late eighteenth century, as I wrote about in this post.

What is now called the Public Health Service began as a government-sponsored, health plan for merchant sailors on ships entering and leaving US ports and on inland waterways. It was never challenged in the Supreme Court as unconstitutional, nor was it ever attacked by members of the opposition party. In fact, it was supported by both Federalists and Anti-Federalist politicians of the day.

The third reason why we don’t have universal, single-payer is because the government allowed employers to provide coverage during WWII to attract women into the workplace when the men went overseas. The UK is often cited as an example for single-payer, but what most supporters of this type of plan do not realize is that because of the devastation the UK suffered at the hands of German bombs, their health care system needed to be re-built from scratch, so the government stepped in with the NHS. Even Churchill supported it.

Fourth, we have always provided health care to certain at risk groups like the poor (Medicaid), the elderly (Medicare), and to children (CHIP), as well as to former service persons and their families (Tricare), etc. Perhaps the way to begin to get universal coverage is to merge all of these programs into one, then expand it to cover everyone else.

But for the time being, a major disaster was averted, but we should not think this is the end of the debate, nor is there victory. The battle lines are drawn, and the enemy is not surrendering. This is not a time for congratulation, but for vigilance and resolve.

Legislators in Washington State are considering a bill, S. B. 5355, that would require the state’s Department of Labor & Industries to pay for telemedicine sert d require the department to provide access to telemedicine and reimburse providers for health care services provided to injured workers through such services.

The bill defines telemedicine as follows, according to the article, “the use of interactive audio and video technology, permitting real-time communication between the patient and the provider. ” It would exclude audio-only telephone calls (my White Paper mentioned this as a legal barrier to implementing medical travel into workers’ comp), fax messages, or emails.

Should this become legal, telemedicine services provided by hospitals, rural health clinics, physician offices, community mental health centers, and skilled nursing facilities would be covered.

This would have a profound impact on implementing medical travel into workers’ comp in Washington State, as this is one of two states that allows patients to travel outside the state or outside the country for medical treatment.

The Department of Labor & Industries has a page on their website called “Find A Doctor” where they list physicians in both Canada and Mexico, as well as the rest of the US, and when I began my research for my paper back in 2011, had a list of physicians in the following countries: England, Germany, Honduras, New Zealand, the Philippines, Spain, Thailand and Ukraine.

As more states allow telemedicine services to be covered under workers’ comp, the day will come that getting surgery abroad, especially in the Western Hemisphere countries, will become reality, and will go a long way to lower costs and speed workers back to work, and relieve the stress to the health care system that repeal of the ACA will have on health care in the US.

Quotes

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

– Muhammad Ali

“If people are not laughing at your goals, your goals are too small..”

– Azim Premji

“Those who say your dreams are ridiculous have given up on theirs.”

– Unknown

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

– Thomas Carlyle

“As the work is done for the employer, and therefore ultimately for the public, it is a bitter injustice that it should be the wage-worker himself and his wife and children who bear the whole penalty.”

– President Theodore Roosevelt, 1907

To permit every lawless capitalist, every law-defying corporation, to take any action, no matter how iniquitous, in the effort to secure an improper profit and to build up privilege, would be ruinous to the Republic and would mark the abandonment of the effort to secure in the industrial world the spirit of democratic fair dealing.

– Theodore Roosevelt, 1908

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

– John Kenneth Galbraith

“Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of their right to join the union of their choice.”

– Dwight D. Eisenhower

“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

– Thomas Jefferson

“Mischief springs from the power which the moneyed interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control, from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges… which are employed altogether for their benefit.”

– Andrew Jackson

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong it’s reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

– Abraham Lincoln

“Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”

“Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.”

– Karl Marx

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, NOT on fighting the old, but on BUILDING the NEW.”

– Socrates

“Every man takes the limits of his field of vision for the limits of the world”

– Arthur Schopenhauer

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

– Arthur Schopenhauer

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

– Winston Churchill

“No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.”

– Robin Williams

“There can be no equality or opportunity if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, control, or singly cope with.”

– Woodrow Wilson

“Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.”

– John Stuart Mill

“The masters of the government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States.”

– Woodrow Wilson

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.”

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health [care] is the most shocking and inhuman[e]…”